On the subject of skinny white soul, here’s something I described to Simon as “r’n’dweeb’. Not my coinage, and as he pointed out it’s more likejuke than anything else. But good. Chicago, doing it again.

I also ended up discovering Melbourne artist Faux Pas. All over the place, in a mad decent way.

And last week, via Che, Kimbra doing her live thing in alleyways and studios. Seriously good.

+1 for no music required. I guess this makes me an old fogey too. I thought that it would go without saying that if you are watching, for example, France v England in a World Cup Quarterfinal, you let the atmosphere grow rather than drowning it out with pop tunes. But nope. Heaven forbid that we could actually hear the crowd celebrating after a try, or that the visiting fans might actually manage to sing a verse without being interrupted.There might be some merit in blaring music in, say, Super 15 matches, where half of the crowd are teenagers running around flirting or trying to score cigarettes, and the promoters are afraid viewers might hear the quiet sound of indifference after a team scores... but this is the World Cup - shouldn't that be different? And then most of the posters on this thread are arguing about what braindead hook would be the most appropriate to drown out the crowd with.

There has been some talk in this cup about how quiet and apathetic the NZ crowds are. I guess this is the result of 15+ years of being "entertained" at rugby. We've forgotten about being interested in the actual game, and being thrilled by the sound of 60,000 people roaring in excitement.

Shame when lots of other things have been done tastefully. The anthems at Eden Park the last 2 weeks have been spine-tingling. Ah well, at least they didn't whack on "Song 2" when Iniesta scored in the final last year.

Moving on from my pet gripe...

@Yamis - HK2001 was a bit high rotate; one of the other songs you are probably thinking of was Jennifer Lopez "Let's get loud". Rough through a Pims hangover.

@Steve Barnes - I think that Neil Young's music for "Dead Man" was recorded similarly.

I was at that game too and it was great but, at a risk of being called an old grump, some of the crowd antics greatly annoyed me--especially those attention-seekers who turn their back on the game and shout inanities to their mates in the cheap seats.

There has been some talk in this cup about how quiet and apathetic the NZ crowds are. I guess this is the result of 15+ years of being "entertained" at rugby. We've forgotten about being interested in the actual game, and being thrilled by the sound of 60,000 people roaring in excitement.

I've never been impressed by the Eden Park crowd at the few games I have attended. I remember a handful of French outdoing the entire terraces in 1994, and the member's stand might as well have been empty. Possibly just an Auckland thing - the Waikato fans were certainly noisy both times I saw them take the Shield home.

Going to a Phoenix game in the circular sports arena that looks nothing like a cake tin is a great experience after quiet NZ crowds. Even the appearance of an aeroplane is noted and commented on by the whole crowd.

A friend of mine sang in a number of RWC anthem choirs in Hamilton and Rotorua. The choir IS miked for singing live and are then "enhanced and complemented" by a recorded track. Sitting in the car with four of them on the drive to Rotorua while they practised the Russian anthem was quite an experience...

I get it that the IRB (and also the bozos running Super XV and Tri Nations games) think that there is a need to entertain the crowd and produce the best possible atmosphere

There is some merit to this. While the Black Eyed fucking Peas have been pissing me off as much as the next reasonable person, I vividly recall a moment of realisation late on the second day of the Wellington Sevens, just on dusk, right at peak euphoria time, when the DJ miscued and played more than a few opening bars of some bit of offensive rock I didn't recognise -- and the crowd started to turn from boisterous to nasty. Atmosphere in a situation of such mass arousal, where everyone is hooked into a common mood, can be a powerful thing, and the wrong atmosphere can be dangerous.

I think he faded out to 'No Woman No Cry' or something, and everyone got on with ignoring the games.

Oh, and the other thing about stadium atmosphere – even crowd noise is cued in. They ‘seed’ cheering, applause and so forth through the PA system so you know how to respond. I don't know if they do it here, but it’s apparently common overseas.

It’s all mass arousal/quiescence and crowd dynamics. (And you know who else was good at mass arousal and crowd dynamics? Yeah.)

I've found James Blake's music attractive too, and those Alex Clare and Jamie Woon tracks sound good at first listen too. But I guess I've been confused by their characterisation as "post-dubstep"...Which sounds all very nitpicky, and I'm not trying to put anything in a box, but I'm just a bit confused and intrigued about the musical strands that led to these new trends.

Since i invoked the spectre of Post-Dubstep...

I can only really answer in relation to my own history and the contrails that intertwine toward my personal musical mindscape. To me post-dubstep is a non-genre that signifies music that exists due to Dubstep, but is not Dubstep itself.

This is further complicated by the the genre disconnect between 90's downbeat and this years favoured genre signposts. Any release by the band Leftfield would be listed as dubstep today, in fact i do believe i have seen Massive Attack 'filed under' dubstep. The new album by 90's Trip Hop favourites Lamb was tagged Dubstep when I purchased it; even though they have not evolved far beyond what would be expected had Dubstep never become popular.

Dubstep grew out of the Grime and 2-step revival around 2002, in many ways a reaction to the trance-house that dominated at the time. It was initially characterised by a grittier feel with less vocals and more studio created tension than Grime and somehow evolved into a dancefloor genre as well as a chill-out alternate [Burial, Kode 9]. Much of what is put forward as Post-dubstep seems to be more focused on the 'dub' path exposed by Dubstep with a broader use of space and drawn out tension. It is easy to link many of these works to much of the electronic dub popular in the early nineties (then filed under: Downtempo).

I personally find the post-dubstep handle useful in that it signposts music that has been influenced by the creative and populist explosion of this music a few years ago whilst separating it from the more base [and less creative] Wobble and formulaic ['Ministy of Sound presents Dubstep'] examples of the form. As an aside I consider Wobble to be very similar to 'Jump-up' the populist offshoot of Drum and Bass in the mid-nineties; which had a tight formula and Wobble-esque vibe itself. i could ramble for hours on how much the current wave of bro-step owes to Si-Begg, Noodles Discoteque and the various related Breaks spin-offs of the late nineties ...buts that's a whole other kettle of fish. Genre titles have always been tricky, and much like modern english one needs to losen the reigns a little and not get too pedantic when the signposts move. Progressive house used to mean a type of dubby-acid house disco (guerilla records et-al) but less than a decade later everthing in that bin had a very strong trancey vibe. In many ways the genre had evolved with the musicians and DJs involved, problematic if you need to define a genre rigidly.

Woon is particularly easy to mark a path with through this teritory, as his first single was both infulenced by and involved with Burial (Burial being a pretty hory, easy to spot tipping point). If you listen closely you can still hear the half-time snares quite often, maybe we should have called it Half-step?

I note that the sun is good at mass ejection...So much so that it is squeezing satellites out of orbit notes Spaceweather:

Solar activity has strongly affected ROSAT's decay. Only a few months ago, experts expected the satellite to re-enter in December. However, they did not anticipate the recent increase in sunspot count. Extreme ultraviolet radiation from sunspots has heated and "puffed up" Earth's atmosphere, accelerating the rate of orbital decay. The massive observatory now has a date with its home planet in October.

Oh, and the other thing about stadium atmosphere – even crowd noise is cued in. They ‘seed’ cheering, applause and so forth through the PA system so you know how to respond. I don’t know if they do it here, but it’s apparently common overseas.

I seem to recall it being tried one Super 15 season, but it’s certainly not common.

New Zealand rugby crowds are, however, notoriously passive. In part that’s our natural undemonstrative manner. But rugby also has a particular rhythm. It breaks for set pieces, which reward close observation, and then (at test level anyway) some play happens so fast that you need to pay attention to see what’s happening.

I do genuinely love that, unlike certain other codes, opposing fans sit together, or even come to the game together. Banter with the other side is good fun.

I, personally, am always happy to help the referee from the stands and, where necessary, to provide opposition players with a frank assessment of their character and technical skills. I can be quite loud.

But I still like music at games done well. During that 2005 Lions tour, playlists were strongly oriented towards New Zealand music and it really worked. Two things from the game at Wellington Stadium stay with me.

One is the NZ fans being spurred into singing by the Lions fans – you felt you had to match them. There was the cue of the music – Jesus, we’re New Zealanders, we need a little help. But realising at one point that the Lions fans had joined in singing ‘Why Does Love Do This To Me’ – that was priceless.

And then, after one of the great All Black performances, as people trailed out of the arena, some genius put Dave Dobbyn’s ‘Welcome Home’ (which came out that year) on the PA system. I sat down and enjoyed it. It sounded beautiful.

And that’s where I reckon the people programming music still miss it. Sometimes, before a big test, you do just want to enjoy that feeling of expectation. Imagine some ominous dub billowing around the stadium. Then again, I dream of hearing ‘Point That Thing Somewhere Else’ before a game, and that ain’t gonna happen.

The absolute worst thing to be blasted with: the soundtracks of TV ads. That happened to me once at North Harbour Stadium, after they’d refurbished and put in new PA system, which was about three metres away from our heads and bone-jarringly loud. I was livid about it and wrote a stern letter of complaint.

It’s all mass arousal/quiescence and crowd dynamics. (And you know who else was good at mass arousal and crowd dynamics? Yeah.)

Hardly noticed the music at the game I went to. There was too much other stuff going on. Great music is not something I've ever associated with rugby. It's more about the crowd noise. It didn't seem especially muted to me, but I've never been to, say, an FA Cup match.

To be honest, the sudden blaring up of repeated clips of music reminds me of a commercial break on TV, something that my brain has learned to filter out. I felt my hand involuntarily twitch to an imaginary remote.

In the mid 90s, I was once paid to do a focus group on how rugby could be promoted, paying particular attention to beating its rival, rugby league. This went on for several hours. There were 4 of us, two who claimed to prefer rugby, two for league. I was quite surprised just how outspoken the league guys were about the failings of rugby in generating an entertaining stadium experience, how Tina Turner had done wonders to promote the league, and suggesting strongly that more rock music at the the games would be a good idea. I disagreed, mainly because I thought rugby should be seeking differentiation, rather than copying, and suggested that rugby could look to classical music, particularly anything with a military style, since one of the key things that appeals about rugby is the nationalism. Those are key elements of the anthems and the haka that have always been very popular at rugby games.

It has seemed ever since then that they listened to both ideas, putting more of both kinds of music in.

One of the things I find most incongruous about NZ music at the games is that they always, always, evoke thoughts of people who would most likely have been very much on the anti-tour side. It doesn't cause nice feelings, I feel just that little bit alienated from the game every time. The kind of people who dig kiwi music and the kind of people who like rugby, as cliches, would seem to be very different tribes.

@Yamis - HK2001 was a bit high rotate; one of the other songs you are probably thinking of was Jennifer Lopez "Let's get loud". Rough through a Pims hangover.

Ah yes, now it comes back to me. I don't know if I'll ever recall the third song though. 3 songs for 3 days... even teenagers on a camping holiday don't torture themselves that much.

On rugby crowd atmospheres in NZ, they are pretty lame. People go quiet when it's tense or their team isn't going well, they cheer when their team scores a try and clap a good kick and that's about it (I know, I've been one of them many times). The All Blacks chant is about as rowdy as they get. We have NO 'songs' it seems for any of our rugby teams in the country. In terms of the crowd singing them of their own accord.

Warriors crowds are louder and get into it more but again, we've got no songs or chants either.

The Phoenix are well supported though. It's European ripoff stuff but they get stuck in nonetheless.

So long as crowds in NZ don't make any real noise of their own I have no problem with the music (although the choice is generally mediocre). If we want it gone then make some noise!!!!